All the Backlot’s a Stage : ‘Shadows’ Leaves Theater and Takes Over CBS Studio Center

Loping across the soundstage with his long, curly black hair bouncing with each step, Michael Arabian looks distinctly out of place. He might be one of Eddie Vedder’s sidemen, not the fellow in charge of an ambitious Los Angeles theater experiment. Certainly not the man directing such sitcom hall-of-famers as Bernie Kopell (“The Love Boat”), Robert Mandan (“Soap”) and William Christopher (“MASH”).

But even Arabian’s current project, directing Ronald Lachman’s new drama, “A History of Shadows,” doesn’t seem to belong where it is. Which, he says, is precisely the point.

When the show opens Friday it will have been a year since Arabian took over the television turf of the CBS Studio Center in Studio City--home to “Seinfeld,” “Roseanne,” “Hearts Afire” and “Evening Shade,” among other shows--to present an environmental, site-specific staging of “Romeo and Juliet.” Although he was not the only director in ’93 to try the theater-meets-soundstage formula--writer-director Nicholas Meyer set his play about Leo Tolstoy, “Loco Motives,” on a Culver Studio soundstage--Arabian’s version of the star-crossed lovers’ tragedy played all over the studio’s back streets and alleyways as well as the “Seinfeld” stage.

And that was only the beginning.

Frustrated with what he terms the traditional theater’s unfriendliness to work that blends spoken word with complex visual design, and dissatisfied with the built-in technical limitations of L.A.’s smaller theaters, Arabian is no longer a free-lance director, but the founder (with co-producer Suzanne Battaglia) of InSITE. The theater company (now including Lachman and co-producer Richard Hart) is setting long-term plans for more theater-on-the-backlots, where site-specific and mixed-media are the watchwords.

“What I do is paint with light and the set and the actors,” Arabian says in a quietly pointed tone, watching his cast prepare for a scene in the soundstage home of “Hearts Afire.”

“The story is always paramount, and tells me how to paint. But because I do at most one show a year, each one means a great deal to me, and I really want to get into an audience’s subconscious.”

Arabian’s strategy for a bigger, visual theater may provide a vivid marriage of theater and the film and television industry, “but I’m not sure that it’s a trend, and it wasn’t as if I had a bidding war among studios for ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ” he says. In fact, most of the studios Arabian approached showed only mild interest; the CBS Studio Center management, though, liked Arabian’s ideas, and have approved his project for summer 1995, with a 1996 show in the talking phase. (Arabian will say nothing about the ’95 project, except that it will be site-specific, and not with the multimedia elements of “History of Shadows.”)

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A CBS Studio Center spokesperson who would not be identified explains that “during the summer, there is less activity on the lot because of the hiatus in network production schedules. It’s in the studio’s interest to have as much activity on the lot as possible, and Michael was persistent enough to convince us that his ideas would fit in with our needs. The studio isn’t a partner in his productions. On the other hand, we’re happy to assist film students, who’ve used our facilities, and artists like Michael, because they’re the future of the business.”

Lachman’s play, adapted from Robert C. Reinhart’s novel, appears to be strikingly conventional compared to past work Arabian has chosen to stage, ranging from Franz Xaver Kroetz’s wordless tragedy “Request Concert” to Charles Borkhuis’ apocalyptic “Phantom Limbs.” Lachman’s memory drama observes a young gay man (played by Larry Cox) doing a research project on the lives of four gay men (Christopher, Kopell, Mandan and Jack Beckerman) during the Depression and World War II eras, when carrying on double lives in and out of the bedroom was simply assumed.

“The play’s really not conventional at all,” Arabian insists. “I usually pick out a play I want to do, but Ron gave me this with me in mind. I was attracted to it because it doesn’t have a traditional play structure. It’s full of fragmented monologues, like the play ‘Kennedy’s Children,’ but on a first reading, I couldn’t figure out how it could be done. That’s it, though: Because I couldn’t figure it out, I was intrigued to see if it was possible.”

Arabian’s solution includes devising a rear-projection slide system that will cause sudden scene changes and instantly place characters in the past or present, as the constantly time-shifting drama requires.

“It’s harder to do this here than in a standard theater, which already has most of the equipment in place,” says the director, in his late 30s and a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. “But you can produce bigger, more dramatic images here. I like the supposed impossibility of it. My friends think I’m a little crazy that way. A 90-minute silent play about a woman killing herself (“Request Concert”) shouldn’t work, any more than adults playing young kids (“Found a Peanut”) should work. I’m tempted by fate, I suppose.”

* “A History of Shadows” runs Friday through June 12 at CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Ave., Studio City, (213) 466-1767. Shows are Tues.-Sun. at 8 p.m. $20-$25.